ORANGE DYKUN

I sent this piece to my list-serve last year, on Oct. 22, 2004:

Greetings Family and Friends,

Well, it's been a long time since I have been able to write to y'all, my family and friends. I have been back in Pidhajtsi for however many weeks, and have not been able to read or write email, as the local computer club no longer has an internet connection, which means it is now just an arcade (i.e., its crawling with kids playing computer games). So after a few weeks of not being able to communicate, I finally started going crazy, and so one morning woke up early and decided that I was getting on the next bus for Lviv, where I am now writing to you all.

I was in Pidhajtsi for a while, helping part of my family there bring in the fall harvest.

This is a fascinating time of the year to be there, especially in terms of observing the real differences between life here and in the US or "the West." Most of the harvesting is done by hand with very little assistance from machinary, and I am very curious to chat with those of you my friends who have worked on organic farms in the US, in order to compare notes. I wonder if organic farmers in the US go about the harvest in a similar manner as to how the average Ukrainian villager does, such that life in rural Ukraine could serve as a model for how things might be done in the West.

Anyhow, I am not much in the mood to write, in the sense that I am not much in the mood to describe in any real detail the process and procedures of the fall harvest. But I want to share with you what working and living in this way in a Ukrainian village has stimulated me into thinking. Here's an interesting observation I have made about myself in this country. I have spent, from time to time, a bit of time with Americans here in Ukraine, some of whom are from the Ukrainian diaspora, most of whom are here on Fulbright Scholarships or are with the Peace Corps. In general, these people look at Ukraine in this way: they see what is missing in Ukraine that we have in the West, and they think that Ukraine in general is a kind of silly country that needs to import such and such from the West. This is an interesting point of view, and I learn a lot from them, but mine is completely different. I see how things get done here in Ukraine, and think to myself, "Wow, what the West can learn to do without." It is obvious that the main difference between how I and most of my American colleagues here think and operate is that I do not automatically assume that all the technoligical fancy stuff in the US is good and necessary and that Ukraine is nothing but backwards (not, however, that I do not recognize the need for certain improvements here).

Of course, this touches upon a huge nerve for both Ukrainians and Americans, on what can be called the human need to imagine and determine just what and where the earthly paradise is. For me, it is not a foregone conclusion that it is in America. In fact, for me, paradise is a state of mind more than it is a material reality, even though there are certain material necessities that make establishing a mental paradise easier. However, I must say that the material reality of America is WAY more than what is necessary for the establishment of one's own mental paradise, to my mind; and in fact, it is both the lack of mental harmony that drives America into material OVERabundance and the vice versa, all at once. Anyhow, not only do most Americans here think that their homeland is the earthly paradise, but so do many Ukrainians imagine that it must be. And supposedly, many of them (both these Americans and many Ukrainians I have met) regard the fact that I do not necessarily think that America is such a paradise as a mark of the degree to which I am an American (a refugee, but nonetheless American). This is a notion with which I fervently disagree, for one obvious but easily overlooked reason: There are Ukrainians in Ukraine, and Americans in America, who like me also do not think that America is the universal paradise which all societies should be striving to emulate. This means that this aspect of my thinking does not mark me as an American; it marks me as a participant of a counterculture that does not assume that the way things are done in America is obviously the best, a counterculture that exists both in the US and in Ukraine, and which therefore is a counterculture that is both Ukrainian AND American (and which is a counterculture that is also quite international--not every human being on planet earth admires and lusts to become an American). Also, and very importantly and very instructively, there have also been many a Ukrainian who have told me that the degree to which I don't assume that America is the greatest country on earth, and that the American way is the only way, is a mark of the degree to which my spirit is Ukrainian. That is also not correct. I am an American of sorts, and a Ukrainian of sorts, but most definitely, I am an Ukrainian-American. But the point is: The degree to which one regards America as a paradise has nothing to do with how American or Ukrainian one is. Americanness and Ukrainianness can not be defined by one's love and dislike for different things in the US. Ukrainians who worship the US still are Ukrainians, and Americans who are critical of it still are Americans, and regardless of what I like and don't like about either the US or Ukraine, I am still a Ukrainian-American.

Regardless, one thing is seems quite true of the majority of Ukrainians who idolize the US: they have a very poor understanding of what life in the US is truly like. I have cousins who refuse to believe me when I say that the kids on Beverly Hills 90210 are not average Americans, but rich kids. And from the way that many people here talk about the US, it is apparent to me that the US is, for many people, this fantasyland where not only financial woes are nonexistant, but a place in which all of the probelms of being HUMAN simply do not exist. They can't believe that there are American families--like soooooo many families here in Ukraine--that are utterly divided by fights over money or status or prestige, etc. And they seem to think that all Americans are happy, that the typical emotions of being human dissolve in the happiness of a consumer wonderland. Feeling unhappy? Go shopping!

But the thing is, today most Ukrainians can go shopping. They just want to be able to go shopping more often (now I am speaking figuratively, not literally). I could go on and on, and actually, I have been writing an essay about all of this kind of stuff, comparing the US and Ukraine, discussing what I find good about the US and bad about Ukraine and vice versa, and maybe will someday finish it and send it off. But here's another thing that I have come to feel about Ukraine, a feeling that would probably stimulate much opposition from many a Ukrainian as well as American: the life in Ukraine is indeed difficult and harsh for many, but I am more and more convinced that at least 50% of the problem, the difficulty with the life here for the average Ukrainian is mental and has nothing to do with real poverty. I mean, Ukraine is not India nor the subsaharan Africa. Ukraine actually has a quite high standard of living by global standards, and to my mind, such things should ONLY be judged by global, not Western standards. For there is just no way that every society on planet earth can be like the US or even like the west European countries. There are simply too many people and too few resources, and the environment would simply collapse if all 6 billion plus inhabitants of the earth were to conusme at the rate of a western European, let alone an American. The West needs to slow down its consumption--which is one reason why I am so against Bush, for his post September 11 commandment to all Americans to keep up and even step up their consumption!

Not to say that I am totally against the market or consumerism. It's great to be able to buy things in Ukraine, and most Ukrainians can participate in the new-fangled, post-Soviet culture of consumerism (as I said above, most Ukrainians can shop). Things are not that bad--they only are in people's minds because they are comparing themselves to an overly consumptive western world, when they really should be comparing themselves to the whole rest of the world. I fervently believe that Urkaine would become a much happier place if this 50% side of Ukraine's woes--this mental side that grossly underestimates Ukraine's own self-worth--could change. And I would go further and say that the other side--that 50% that truly has to do with inequalities of wealth and power--can only be overcome once people here stop thinking that everything is so bad in Ukraine, that it's not worth being Ukrainian, and so think things like, "Let's go to America or the West, or look toward Russia as a savior." All of which is to say that 50% of Ukraine's struggle is material, while the other part has to do with overcoming a self-defeating, self-deprecatinig, subservient and colonial mentality and postcolonial depression.

Anyhow. . .I still love this country to death, and in some ways even more because of all this, if any of you know what I mean.

Na Vse Dobre (All the Best),

Stefan

This photo was sent with the orginal email.

Now to a present day comment: overall I still agree with what I wrote above, but I perhaps would write it differently today. This was written before the OR. In the interviews I have so far conducted about a year after the OR, lots of activists have talked about how among the biggest obstacles faced by the grassroots movement against the oligarchy before the OR was Ukrainians' pessimism, fatalism, skepticism, and fear, which is, I guess, what I meant in part last year by stating the problem in Ukraine was 50% about a "self-defeating and self-deprecating, subservient and colonial mentality and postcolonial depression."

Ukraine has a long history of many failed attempts to make a dramatic change (as does Russia), and people have become pessimistic and fatalistic (it is our lot to be poor, and to be abused by corruption, etc.). Ukrainians before the OR were widely skeptical of anyone who promised to improve things (and they have once again become rather skeptical, and with reason). They also were fearful as they have been to some extent rendered docile by generations of frightful authoritarianism. But enough were not afraid to keep the flame of resistance alive. The OR did not happen in a vaccuum. . .

But to explain this 50% mental/50% material problem in Ukraine, one should talk about corruption, and the demoralization (the mental) and poverty (the material) it leads to and which is also its cause, once the circular chain poverty-corruption-demoraliztion-corruption-poverty gets rolling. . .or rather, one should say that corruption has mental and material side, which is both a mental and material cause as much as effect. . .

Now first of all, it is necessary to say that corruption is at the chore of what is the 50% side that is material--i.e., corruption causes poverty, and poverty causes corruption, and round and round. Bohdan ?, a professor of poli sci somewhere in Canada, once wrote to me in an email that corruption is like a disease that effects the head first--if the government is sick with it, the whole social body will eventually get sick too, especially if it gets way out of control in the head/government. In 2004, Ukraine's government or political-economic system ranked among the top 20 most corrupt in the world. The level of corruption is vast and incomprehensible to the average Westerner, and it still is difficult to fathom for anyone who is truly knowledgable about the significant degree of corruption and crime in the business practices and governments of the West. The corruption in Ukraine is simply way beyond what exists today in the West, even under the Bush administration in the US (which to my mind is corrupt and would-be authoritarian, but still nowhere near to the degree of post-Soviet regimes).

Corruption eats away at society. For example, it slowly destroys what people think of their society, and of others within it. People start to loose respect for the politicians and business leaders and often even their neighbors in, if they have engaged in or are suspected to have engaged in corruption, in their country, and people start to look at anyone in any position of power, be it local or in some higher government or business post, with nothing but skepticism. The Ukrainian hip-hop group Tartak recorded a song, I think in 2003, that spoke to this sense of demoralization. The title of the song was ''Ne Khochu Buty Herojam Ukrajiny (I don't want to be a hero of Ukraine)!" They were not entirely serious--it was protest song, against the corruption.

The OR helped people greatly to start to overcome the mental side, the decay in the sense of the value of contemporary Ukrainian society; let's hope that sooner, rather than later, that this will be translated into material overcoming as well. . .because if it does not, the mental problems will also persist, and the cycle will continue. However, the mental side of corruption also is a barrier to the material side, and it is in this mental side where the change needs to start the most. The OR's biggest success so far is some ways is that corruption has become stigmatized. Hopefully, that will mean it will be brought under better control in the long run. . .